Part I: How to setup a three-node NUC Nutanix CE cluster

This blog was authored by MarcNutanix Sr. Systems Engineer at Nutanix.

The following is my experience in successfully setting up a three-node Nutanix Community Edition (CE) cluster for my home lab. During this process I did a lot of research and reviewed the CE forums, [go].

Since much of the information can be found in many locations, I thought it was a good idea to put them together in a single post that consolidates the details on how to get your first Nutanix CE cluster up and running.

NOTE: Nutanix CE can run on 1, 3 or 4 Node Configurations. I specifically selected a (3) Node configuration in my home lab since this is also the minimum config for our Nutanix Customers in the real world.

The hardware install is very easy, just flip the NUC over, loosen 4 screws at each corner, remove the bottom cover and insert memory and the SSD drives.

Now that you have your hardware setup, the next step is to register and download the Nutanix CE software.

Register to join the Community

Now that you have access to the Community
► Download the Nutanix CE Image file [go]
► Next, you have to get the image onto a USB Drive which your Node will boot from. I used Rufus on Windows, https://rufus.akeo.ie/
► Verify you have the following files downloaded.

► Just click on Start and the Nutanix CE Image will be “burned” onto the USB Flash Drive.

► IMPORTANT: Each NUC needs its own USB flash drive to boot up and run Nutanix CE.
► Now plug in the USB flash drives into each one of your NUCs, power on the NUCs and install Nutanix CE.

Planning my (3) Node NUC Nutanix CE Cluster

I wanted to take some time and explain how my home network setup is configured and how my Nutanix CE home lab will interface with it. The Nutanix CE configuration will be sitting on my bookshelf in my home office, ready for use!
So my cable modem and wireless access point (with 4 Ports) sits on the main floor. All my laptops, tablets, phones, devices connect to the main floor WAP.

Since I wanted to have my Nutanix CE home lab sit in the bookshelf of my home office which is upstairs, I did the following:
► Purchased a gigabit ethernet switch for my lab
► Purchased a WAP to extend my home wireless
► Simply plugged in each NUC’s ethernet port into the gigabit ethernet switch
► Since the WAP is extending my home wireless, anything I plug into the bookshelf switch is connected to the internet

NOTE: You need to have internet connectivity when you log into the CVM or Cluster IP address via Prism to manage and run your Nutanix CE Cluster because this is tied to your Community email/password on my.nutanix.comMy configurationHost (Physical NUC) IP Address: 192.168.1.150-152Host Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0Host Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Things to do after Nutanix CE Installation and before you create your Cluster

After the installation, the first thing I did was to change the CVM memory which by default takes up 16GB. The NUC has a total of 32GB of memory, I wanted to reduce the amount of memory the CVM default takes so I can run plenty of virtual machines in my Nutanix CE home lab.

I decided to reduce the CVM memory to 8GB. After a couple weeks of using my Nutanix CE Cluster with plenty of virtual machines, I have not experienced any problems or concerns at all running each CVM with 8GB of memory.
To reduce the CVM memory to 8GB you can either (1) log directly into the Nutanix CE node or (2) SSH into the Nutanix CE node. Either way make sure to log in as “root” and not “nutanix”.

NOTE: Remember anytime you log into the NUC or Node you use “root” and anytime you log into the CVM you use “nutanix”. The password by default is nutanix/4u for either “root” or “nutanix”.

Creating the Cluster
Now that you have installed each NUC node and configured each CVM with 8GB of memory, now is the exciting step of setting up a Cluster with your NUC Nodes.
► SSH into one of the CVMs, I opened up terminal on my Mac and typed “ssh nutanix@192.168.1.160” and used the password “nutanix/4u”
► Type “cluster –s cvmip,cvmip,cvmip create (no spaces between the commas)
► Example, to create my cluster I used “cluster –s 192.168.1.160,192.168.1.161,192.168.1.162 create”

► After completion, hopefully everything is up and running
► You can type “cluster status” and each CVM will display its status

Logging into your super cool new Nutanix CE Cluster for the first time
► Open your web browser of choice and connect to one of your CVM IP Addresses
► Use “admin” for the username and the password
► You will then be asked to change the passwordNOTE: You need to make sure your laptop, tablet, etc. that you are using to access Prism also has internet access since Prism will ask for your email/password that you used to log into the Community site (my.nutanix.com).

Congrats! You are now logged into your Nutanix CE ClusterConfirm that CVMs are set to 8GB of memory
- Click on Home – VM

- Click on Table, check the Include Controller VMs box and verify your CVMs are running at 8GB of Memory

Now let the fun begin!Here is a pic of my Nutanix CE Home Lab Bookshelf Cluster

Disclaimer: This blog may contain links to external websites that are not part of Nutanix.com. Nutanix does not control these sites, and disclaims all responsibility for the content or accuracy of any external site. Our decision to link to an external site should not be considered an endorsement of any content on such site

Hi,
Great writeup ! just one question, after tconfiguring the host and CVm ip address, therer is teh set up single node cluster question (sowmthing like that anyway, do u chck that or leave it un checked?

valeriavong: Thank you for this great article!
Just one clarification: In your screenshots seems like you used the .gz (compressed image) file to burn to the USB thumb drive but if I'm not mistaken, it should be the uncompressed image file (.img). Is this correct?

Ok. 32G RAM will be OK for one node.
Yes, drives look fine. You want to have one SSD + one HDD minimum. Both your drives look good to me. Even your SSD can be a little smaller if you like (250G for example) and the HDD can be as big as you like.

Great Write-up!
I have one question about logging into Prism in a disconnected state. I plan on traveling with my 3 node cluster and am wondering what I do when I don't have connectivity to the internet. Looks like I may need to figure out a way to tether my phone if I'm Oscar Mike.

Be wary of which drives you choose. I went with Intell SSD 600p Series nvme drives. They quickly went into read-only state. Its a safety feature built into the drive, apparently. I guess Nutanix was too much for them.

Intel clarified the nature of the read-only feature, which is not based upon the endurance limit. All SSDs have spare area that is dedicated to replacing failed cells. The Intel 600p only switches into a read-only mode when the spare area is exhausted. Intel also noted users can copy the data from a read-only SSD by installing it as a secondary drive in another computer.

I've setup a cluster with 8GB CVM memory and AHV 5.1. It worked but after two weeks the CVMs have run low on Memory despite the cluster is running no load at all (no VMs beneath the CVMs).
:~# ncli cluster get-timezone## There is insufficient memory for the Java Runtime Environment to continue.# Native memory allocation (mmap) failed to map 258998272 bytes for committing reserved memory.# An error report file with more information is saved as:# /home/nutanix/prism/cli/hs_err_pid14868.log

One of the CVMs wasn't reachable via PRISM anymore. I've noticed that there's an option to configure the CVM memory in PRISM to increase memory. However, that doesn't work showing:

Hi all. I'm trying to install the Nutanix CE but when I'm close to the end of my installation I saw the message below:

Wating for the Nutanix Controller VM to start up.....................
"A problem was encountred. Please review the contents of /home/install/firstboot.out for details, and refer to the documentation or the Nutanix NEXT community for nets steps."

It depends. If you have a domain in your local network or lab, you can use the domain controller as both DNS and NTP. Or you can simply use external ones such as Google's public DNS (8.8.8.8) and Public NTP: pool.ntp.org

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